03/17/2017

Marcus Aurelius was the perfect man, says Renan. Yes; the great emperor was a perfect man. But how intolerable were the endless claims upon him! He staggered under the burden of the empire. He was conscious how inadequate one man was to bear the weight of that Titan and too vast orb.

-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism

Today is the anniversary of the death of Marcus Aurelius. On March 17, 180 A.D., Marcus died while on campaign in modern Vienna, perhaps of the Antonine Plague. In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon provides the following description of the emperor

The mildness of Marcus, which the rigid discipline of the Stoics was unable to eradicate, formed, at the same time, the most amiable and the only defective part of his character. His excellent understanding was often deceived by the unsuspecting goodness of his heart. Artful men who study the passions of princes and conceal their own approached his person in the disguise of philosophic sanctity, and acquired riches and honors by affecting to despise them. His excessive indulgence to his brother, his wife, and his son exceeded the bounds of private virtues and became a public injury by the example and consequences of their vices.

One of the best pieces of historical evidence for Marcus Aurelius’ benevolent nature was that he actually shared the principate with Lucius Verus until the latter’s death in 169. For most cases, garbing two men in the imperial purple was tantamount to a death-sentence for the weaker of the two. Caracella and Geta became co-emperors in 209, only to have Caracella murder Geta in 211. Diocletian hoped to peacefully transfer the empire to Constantius Chlorus and Galerius in 305, yet his tetrarchy soon unraveled into a Hobbesian war of all tetrarchs against all tetrarchs. Maximian, Maximinius II, Maxentius, and Licinius were all purple-clad casualties of the series of wars that finally led to Constantine becoming sole emperor in 325. Despite being the favored of the two, Marcus never eliminated Lucius from the scene, and that is a benevolent act quite unique in the cloak-and-dagger world of Roman politics.

Of course, whatever may have been Marcus Aurelius’ character, the emperor is best remembered for the philosophical thoughts, all addressed Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν-to himself, that he wrote down and that have been passed down to posterity as The Meditations. He fascinates because no where in his philosophy is there a hint of academics lecturing birds to fly. Instead, The Meditations clearly carry the solemnity and wisdom of a man simply trying to figure life out for himself, and for himself alone. Here are some of my own favorite thoughts:

“Say to yourself at the start of the day, I shall meet with meddling, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, and unsociable people. They are subject to all those defects because they have no knowledge of good and bad. But I, who have observed the nature of the good, and seen that it is the right; and of the bad, and seen that it is wrong; and of the wrongdoer himself, and seen that his nature is akin to my own—not because he is of the same blood and seed, but because he shares as I do in mind and thus in a portion of the divine—I, then, can neither be harmed by these people, nor become angry with one who is akin to me, nor can I hate him, for we have come into being to work together, like feet, hands, eyelids, or the two rows of teeth in our upper and lower jaws. To work against one another is therefore contrary to nature; and to be angry with one person and turn away from him is surely to work against him.” -II.1

“As are your habitual conceptions, so will your mind be also; for the soul takes its colouring from its conceptions” - V.16

“’In former days, at whatever moment they caught me, I was a man who was blessed by good fortune.’ But the person who is blessed by good fortune is the one who has assigned a good lot to himself, and a good lot consists of this: good dispositions of the soul, good impulses, good actions.” -V.37

“What does my ruling centre mean to me, and what use am I presently making of it, and to what end am I employing it? Is it devoid of reason? Is it detached and severed from sociability? Or is it so fused and blended with my poor flesh as to move at one with it?” -X.24

“The properties of the rational soul are these: it sees itself, it articulates itself, it shapes itself according to its will, it reaps for itself the fruit it produces (in contrast to the fruits of plants and their counterparts in the animal kingdom, which are harvested by others), and it achieves its proper end, wherever the boundaries of its life may be set” -XI.1.

07/28/2014

As your habitual conceptions, so will your mind also; for the soul takes its colouring from its conceptions. Dye it, then, with a succession of conceptions such as these: where it is possible to live, there is also possible to live well; now it is possible to live at court, so it must also be possible to live well at court (V.16).